Wireless messaging, such as wireless paging, is a popular consumer wireless service and will grow because of the availability of new narrowband Personal Communication Services (PCS) frequencies. Wireless communication and messaging provides the foundation for many different types of services. One popular service is one-way paging, which is now very successful. Its popularity has been contributed by numerous factors, including:
(1) the small form factor of the pager device, making it portable; PA0 (2) the low cost of the paging service; PA0 (3) easy maintenance of the pager device; and PA0 (4) ease of use for both message senders and receivers.
One-way paging, however, has no reply capability. A subscriber to a one-way paging service must rely on an alternate method to respond to any messages that are received. For example, after receiving a page from the one-way paging service, a subscriber often has to find a telephone and make a call to respond to the message.
Recently, some ideas have been proposed to design a "two-way paging system" while preserving the benefits of one-way paging, i.e., the small paging device, low cost service, easy maintenance and ease of use. These two-way paging systems include return channels, but they are used only for fixed and limited replies.
It would be advantageous if a two-way messaging system could be designed that allows messages to be originated from a wireless messaging device and replies to be dynamically customizable by the recipients. Such systems could act as a hybrid between traditional paging and electronic mail, and improve on traditional paging and messaging services as well as any proposed two-way messaging services by adding direct message origination and reply capability with various capabilities for some message modification and response.